“Becoming Led Zeppelin” has expanded the number of available IMAX screenings, returning to IMAX screens in the US on April 2 and extending its run at the BFI IMAX in London with more screenings added on March 22, 25, 26, 27 and 30.
Ahead of the return of the film to the UK’s largest cinema screen at the BFI IMAX later this month, director Bernard MacMahon told LedZepNews that he has been pleased to hear of Led Zeppelin fans seeing the film multiple times.
“It’s so powerful to be hearing this relayed back to me now by people who have seen the film,” MacMahon says. “I was in a cab in New York recently where the driver told me he had seen the film three times already, and I was shared an incredibly moving post by Warren Ellis of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds where he says that he and the band have seen the film twice already and added ‘It’s loud and beautiful. Bonham will break your heart. You will make a band after watching.’”
“I think if you can give the audience this wonderful musical experience that has an emotional journey in it, that is going to stay with them and they’ll come back and see it again and again,” MacMahon says.
Since its release, “Becoming Led Zeppelin” has grossed more than $11.9 million at the box office, leading to Jimmy Page saying the response to the film was “humbling and inspiring”.
“I wanted to make a musical with their story running through it,” MacMahon says. “I was inspired by the greats of Hollywood musicals of the Golden Age where the songs are sequenced to advance the story.”
“When they’re playing to dispassionate audiences in Europe and people have their fingers in their ears, ‘Communication Breakdown’ is playing. When they’re on their way out to try and get their record deal in America with Atlantic, you’re hearing ‘Your Time is Gonna Come’, when they’re traveling across the US, we’re hearing ‘Ramble On’.”
“I was trying to make a film that when I was 13 or 14, I would happily see three or four times a year at the Brixton Ritzy,” he explains. “Musicals allow you to do that because you get whole songs. And if you’ve got a musical structure that takes you on this journey from the Johnny Burnette Rock and Roll Trio to Lonnie Donegan to Sonny Boy Williamson, and then boom, ‘How Many More Times’ and then ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’, well I’m there! I wanted to make one of those films that you could watch over and over again.”
MacMahon previously explained in interviews that he was inspired by Howard Mylett’s 1976 biography of Led Zeppelin which he read while a child. That book influenced his decision to tell the story of the origins of the band, rather than Led Zeppelin’s 1970s excesses.
To create “Becoming Led Zeppelin”, the filmmakers tracked down rare early footage of Led Zeppelin from the band’s earliest years.
“To our knowledge, every existing piece of footage from this era is in this film, bar one,” MacMahon says. “The only thing that’s not in here is the video of ‘Communication Breakdown’ played at Thee Image Club in Miami. That was three, four years trying to find an original 16mm print, but in the end, all that ever surfaced was an incredibly poor quality VHS copy.”
According to MacMahon, “Becoming Led Zeppelin” is “essentially made like a feature film using archive and using any cinematic technique we can to bring you into that world.”
“There’s a lot of Capra-esque thirties and forties movie techniques of montage and layers used to transport you into that world,” he continues. “It’s obviously all informed by a very close study of stills and ephemera from the period so you really feel like you’re there in these places.”
Allison McGourty, one of the film’s producers and its co-writer, explained that “we never had the chance to see the band live. So we wanted to create something, for a younger generation that would never have that opportunity, that would be as close as you could possibly get to actually being at their concerts.”
“One of our friends, Scottish film director David Mackenzie, called it a hybrid docu-concert film, which is wonderful because you get that experience of going to a concert and being a part of the audience, like for example, with the Texas Pop Festival footage that we found, while also getting to spend time with and learn from these incredible musicians,” MacMahon says. “I really think it’s important people see this in IMAX if they can. It’s what we made it for, the band look amazing and the music sounds fantastic in there.”
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In the context of “Becoming Led Zeppelin” , I think that Peter Grant should of had a much greater input into the storyline, after all it was Jimmy Page and Peter who set up the whole process of forming the band and setting up the whole management side of it, to the point of being a equal fifth shareholder. Maybe the DVD release will include a chapter dedicated to him ,but apart from that it was a great documentary.
I saw the boys in the 1970s 4 times in London. Becoming Led Zeppelin was such a wonderful reminder of how brilliant they all were back then. Pure energy. This film was just magical and I loved it.
I’ve seen it 20 times and will keep going as long as it plays. Led Zeppelin forevermore.